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    Sal Piro, ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ Superfan, Dies at 72

    Like many others, he was riveted by the film and attended numerous midnight showings. Unlike many others, he made it the focus of his life.On a cold, snowy night in January 1977, Sal Piro waited in line outside the Waverly Theater in Greenwich Village to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” for the first time. A campy science-fiction/horror musical whose characters include the cross-dressing mad scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter, it had been developing a following for its Friday and Saturday midnight showings for several months.Mr. Piro didn’t know much about the film, which follows a couple (played by Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick) as they seek help at Frank-N-Furter’s castle after their car gets a flat tire. But he was impressed that one of his friends had already seen it 19 times.“So we got in line, made friends with some of other people on line and, once inside, we were both amazed and gobsmacked and under its spell,” the songwriter Marc Shaiman, a friend who was with Mr. Piro that night, recalled in an email.Mr. Piro remembered his excitement at seeing the giant disembodied red lips that open the film with the song “Science Fiction Double Feature”; the infectious “Time Warp” dance; and Tim Curry’s dramatic entrance as Frank, singing “Sweet Transvestite.”“Image followed image and the impact on me was tremendous,” Mr. Piro wrote in “Creatures of the Night: The Rocky Horror Picture Show Experience” (1990), one of three books he wrote or co-wrote about the film. “I began living the movie as it unreeled.”Fans like Mr. Piro soon became fanatics. Showings turned into extreme exercises in audience participation. They dressed as the characters. They shouted comments at the screen. They danced in the aisles during the musical numbers. They threw rice at the wedding scene.Mr. Piro’s love of the movie lasted the rest of his life. In the spring of 1977, he founded the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” Fan Club with several friends, who chose him as their president. He would ultimately see the film some 1,300 times.He was still the club’s president — and the face of the “Rocky Horror” fan universe — when he died on Jan. 22 at his home in Manhattan. He was 72.His sister, Lillias Piro, said the cause was an aneurysm in his esophagus.Mr. Piro is credited with helping to turn the “Rocky Horror” mania that started at the Waverly into a broad phenomenon that spread to other theaters, in New York City and around the world.He organized events with members of the film’s cast and sent out newsletters keeping fans up to date. He coordinated fans’ performances at theater showings, where he would head to the stage to introduce the film with a chant that began “Give me an ‘R’” and eventually spelled out “Rocky.”“He was a very honest guy, you believed in him,” Lou Adler, a producer of the film, said in a phone interview. “He didn’t have ulterior motives. The fan club wasn’t a business or a means to something else, but to make it the very best for the fans, because he was one of them.”In 2010, to celebrate the release of “Rocky Horror” on Blu-ray, Mr. Piro led a “Time Warp” dance with 8,239 participants in West Hollywood, Calif., which Guinness World Records certified as the largest such dance ever.Showings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” turned into extreme exercises in audience participation, with audience members dressing as the movie’s characters.Larry C. Morris/The New York TimesWhen a young couple walked through the rain to a mad scientist’s castle with newspapers over their heads, audience members similarly sought shelter.Larry C. Morris/The New York TimesSalvatore Francis Martin Piro was born on June 29, 1950, in Jersey City, N.J. His father, Paul, was a construction worker, and his mother, Eileen, was a waitress.Mr. Piro attended Seton Hall University from 1968 to 1972, the last two years at the university’s Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology, but he did not earn a degree.He taught theology and directed plays at Roman Catholic high schools in New Jersey for three years before being laid off in June 1976. He spent that summer as the drama director of an all-girls camp before moving to Manhattan to pursue a career as an actor.He waited tables and got some roles — and then came “Rocky Horror.”A scene from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” featuring, from left, Tim Curry, Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon. Mr. Piro saw the movie more than 1,300 times.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesBefore it was a movie, “The Rocky Horror Show,” written by Richard O’Brien, had opened in 1973 as a stage musical in London. It became a smash hit there and had a brief run on Broadway two years later.The film flopped in limited release in September 1975, but it was revived in early April 1976 as the midnight show at the Waverly.And then came Mr. Piro, Mr. Shaiman and an expanding group of like-minded fans who became part of the early vanguard of audience participation. For Mr. Piro, talking back to the screen brought back memories of 1961, when he was 10 years old and watching “Snow White and the Three Stooges” at a theater.“I remember that just as Snow White was about to bite into the poisonous apple, a voice from the theater warned audibly, ‘You’ll be sooorry!’” he wrote in “Creatures of the Night.”Mr. Shaiman, the future Tony Award-winning composer and co-lyricist of “Hairspray,” said that he and Mr. Piro, friends from community theater in New Jersey, felt compelled to shout their comments at the screen once others began.“Sal & I, both HUGE hams, knew we had to join in,” said Mr. Shaiman, who added that he had seen the film more than 70 times.Mr. Piro, Mr. Shaiman and others in the small group who saw “Rocky Horror” early on will be the subject of a scripted movie, based on “Creatures of the Night,” to be filmed this summer.“It’s hard to think of making the movie without him,” Adam Schroeder, one of the producers, said by phone.Mr. Piro’s involvement in “Rocky Horror” was consuming, but it wasn’t a paying job. Over the years, he wrote greeting cards, a column for The Fire Island News, the three “Rocky Horror” books and the questions for a “Rocky Horror” trivia game.He had a handful of film and TV roles — he played a “Rocky Horror” M.C. in a 1980 episode of the series “Fame” and a photographer in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again” (2016), a made-for-TV remake of the original film.From 1991 to 2014 he worked at the Grove Hotel, in the Cherry Grove community on Fire Island, first as the entertainment director of its Ice Palace nightclub and then as the manager of both the hotel and the nightclub. He also wrote and directed theatrical shows for the Arts Project of Cherry Grove.In addition to his sister, he is survived by two brothers, James and Joseph.Mr. Adler said that he saw Mr. Piro at a film event last month at IFC Center, as the Waverly, where “Rocky Horror” became a hit, is now known.“He said to me we’re both reaching ages where something might happen to either one of us,” said Mr. Adler, who is 89. If that happened, he said Mr. Piro asked him, “Who’s going to watch over Rocky?” More

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    How Far Are Beyoncé Fans Traveling for the Renaissance Tour?

    Members of the BeyHive are going to extraordinary lengths — some of them trans-Atlantic — to ensure they don’t miss the superstar on her coming world tour.How far would you go to see the winningest artist in Grammy history? Is it more or less than 5,800 miles?For Janny Nascimento, a 29-year-old English teacher in Brazil, missing Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour — the singer’s first solo tour since 2016 — was not an option. So she plunked down 850 euros, or about $900, for a pair of tickets to see her favorite artist on June 24 in Frankfurt, Germany.“I would do it again if I had to because this is the dream come true,” Ms. Nascimento said from her apartment in Campos dos Goytacazes, a town four hours northeast of Rio de Janeiro. Though she has never before traveled outside Brazil, “now I’m going through two continents to a place that I have never been to, a country where I don’t even speak the language,” she said.The announcement of the tour on Instagram last week immediately touched off a frenzy for tickets, with fans losing their minds with presale (and resale) anxieties. Chances to snag tickets before they went on sale to the general public were offered to members of Beyoncé’s official fan club and holders of certain credit cards through exclusive presale drops.But early in the registration process, Ticketmaster issued an ominous warning that “demand already exceeds the number of tickets available by more than 800 percent” in several cities, prompting some worried fans to consider an unlikely option: If I’m determined not to miss this tour, is it possible that the rational thing to do is cross an ocean for a concert?Bre Harper, 27, a creative partnerships manager at Spotify who lives in Los Angeles, realized her chances of getting tickets to a North American stop on the tour were slim to none.“I, with the rest of the internet, went on Ticketmaster, where you have to be verified as a fan,” Ms. Harper said, referring to restrictions on sales for U.S. tour dates.Ticketmaster Under ScrutinyThe ticketing giant has come under fire after it botched the rollout of tickets to Taylor Swift’s tour last year — a failure the company blamed on bots.Unhappy Customers: Fiascos involving Swift and Bad Bunny have made Ticketmaster the object of a significant amount of public discontent.Senate Hearing: Live Nation, the owner of Ticketmaster, came under attack from lawmakers in both parties, who called the company a monopoly while quoting lyrics from songs by Ms. Swift.Biden’s Proposal: Days after the Senate hearing, President Biden called for limits to be placed on the fees that companies like Ticketmaster can be charged for tickets to live entertainment.Under Investigation: The Justice Department is said to have opened an antitrust investigation into Live Nation, which predates the latest debacles.“I did not make a Verified Fan account with Ticketmaster,” she added. “I just have a regular account. I didn’t feel like fiddling with the whole Verified Fan thing.”While scrolling on TikTok, Ms. Harper learned that she did not have to be verified to buy tickets to the European leg of the tour. She also noticed that tickets for European dates were often hundreds of dollars cheaper than comparable tickets in the United States, she said. When she asked her boyfriend if he would be willing to travel with her, he said yes.The only European city she could find with tickets available in the “Club Renaissance” standing section was Warsaw, Poland. Ms. Harper, who said she believed the 40-city tour could be the artist’s last, bought a pair of $475 tickets as quickly as she could.“She now has a life, a family,” Ms. Harper said. “I think this is going to be her last hurrah and I didn’t want to miss it.”Tickets to the tour, which is in support of Beyoncé’s seventh solo studio album, “Renaissance,” went on sale to members of the BeyHive fan club on Monday. Ticketmaster’s decision to require Verified Fan registration reflects one of the company’s most muscular attempts yet to thwart bots and stop scalpers from buying tickets and reselling them at absurd markups.Late last year, Ticketmaster was forced to cancel a planned general release of tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour after an overheated presale period ended in chaos. Ms. Swift’s fans complained that tickets were being sold at preposterous markups of up to tens of thousands of dollars on sites like StubHub.The Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation into Live Nation Entertainment, which owns Ticketmaster. Last month, during a nearly three-hour Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, politicians painted the concert giant as a monopoly that hinders competition and harms consumers. Shortly after the announcement of the Renaissance World Tour, the Senate Judiciary Committee issued an ominous warning to Ticketmaster on Twitter.Ticketmaster, whose parent company’s president has acknowledged problems with the presale for Ms. Swift’s tour, did not immediately respond to questions on Friday.The tour is scheduled to begin on May 10 in Stockholm, cutting a path across Europe through June before heading to North America in July.Ms. Harper, a self-described military brat, said she had traveled through Europe extensively, but she had never been to Poland.“It’s not that frightening to me,” Ms. Harper said. “You only live once — let’s go!”Ms. Harper, who posted on Twitter about acquiring her tickets, said that, as a Black woman, she was nervous about only one thing.“I had a lot of people comment or quote my tweet and tell me that there are some racial issues in Poland currently,” she said. “That’s probably the only thing that I’m just a tad bit nervous about.”“But the BeyHive is so supportive,” she added, referring to the superstar’s legion of fans. “There are so many folks that are in my DMs saying that they live or they have relatives in Poland. They are already offering to help me with places to go, eat, and how to navigate the metro.”After she missed an opportunity to see Beyoncé in Rio de Janeiro in 2013, Ms. Nascimento was resolved not to let another chance go by. Although she doesn’t have a passport yet, she has already taken a photo for it.“I’m still struggling, looking at the credit card receipt,” Ms. Nascimento said. “I would do it again if I had to,” she added wistfully.“This is inspired by the album,” Ms. Nascimento said, her pink box braids pulled away from her face. “When ‘Break My Soul’ came out, I was in a very dark place in my life,” she said, “and it was like Beyoncé wrote this thinking about me.”“She knows that I’m struggling, she knows what’s going on,” Ms. Nascimento added. “She was like, release your job, release your mind, you know, let down your hair.” More

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    A ‘Titanic’ Parody Show That Draws Fans Near, Far, Wherever They Are

    Some of the devotees of ‘Titanique,’ which recently moved to the larger Daryl Roth Theater after months of sold-out shows, have seen it more than a dozen times.On a recent Tuesday night at the Daryl Roth Theater in Union Square, temperatures outside hovered in the mid-30s, but inside, a few hundred 30-somethings in sailor hats were sipping “Iceberg” cocktails and grooving to Lizzo’s “Juice.” A gleaming silver and blue tinsel heart hung suspended above the stage like a disco ball.And then: The woman they were waiting for arrived.“It is me, Céline Dion,” said Marla Mindelle, one of the writers and stars of the “Titanic” musical parody show “Titanique,” casting aside a black garbage bag cloak to reveal a shimmering gold gown — a nod to the witch’s entrance from “Into the Woods” — and sashaying her way to the stage to a tidal wave of applause.The sold-out crowd of 270, who sported tight green sequin dresses, black leather jackets and hot pink glasses, had gathered for a special performance commemorating the 25th anniversary of the 1997 blockbuster film, set to hits from Dion’s catalog. Since opening at Asylum NYC’s 150-seat basement theater in Chelsea in June, thanks to strong word of mouth and a passionate social media following, the show has been consistently sold out.“The movie and Céline are still in the zeitgeist,” said Constantine Rousouli, who plays “Titanique”’s romantic male lead, Jack, and created the show with Mindelle and Tye Blue, who also directs.From left, Tye Blue, Constantine Rousouli, Nicholas Connell and Marla Mindelle, the creative team behind “Titanique.”Evelyn Freja for The New York TimesThe show has won praise for its campy tone, improvised moments and energetic cast, and has cultivated a fan army of “TiStaniques,” some of whom have seen the 100-minute show more than a dozen times.“It’s filled with so much joy and heart and just dumb fun,” said Ryan Bloomquist, 30, who works in Broadway marketing and has seen the show five times.The Unsinkable Celine DionThe Canadian superstar has won over fans with her octave-hopping renditions of songs like “Because You Loved Me” and “My Heart Will Go On.”Rare Disorder Diagnosis: Celine Dion announced that she had a neurological condition known as stiff person syndrome, which forced her to cancel and reschedule dates on her planned 2023 tour.Quebec’s Love Will Go On: The extraordinary outpouring in Quebec that greeted Dion’s announcement showed how her fandom, and ideas of national identity in her home province, have evolved.A Consummate Professional: At a concert in Brooklyn in 2020, the pop diva was fully in command of her glorious voice — and the crowd gathered to bask in it.Adored by Fans: Dion can count on some of the most loyal supporters in the industry. In return, she gives all of herself to them.Partially improvised and best enjoyed with a drink in hand, “Titanique,” which retells the story of “Titanic” from Dion’s perspective and through her music, began life as you might expect: during a drunken discussion between Mindelle, 38 (Broadway’s “Sister Act” and “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella”), and Rousouli (“Wicked,” “Hairspray”), 34, at a bar in Los Angeles in 2016.Rousouli and Mindelle, a fellow “Titanic” fan, had become friends while doing dinner theater and pop parody musicals in Los Angeles. And now, Rousouli had an idea: What if they did a “Titanic” parody musical — using Dion’s songs — and made the Canadian singer herself a character in the show?He said he thought, “She’s just going to narrate the show like ‘Joseph,’” referring to the 1968 Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” (It was during this same conversation, he said, that the trash bag entrance idea in the first scene came to life.)Convinced they were onto something, Mindelle and Rousouli worked with Blue, 42, an acquaintance from the Los Angeles dinner theater circuit, to write a script. (The music supervisor Nicholas Connell, 35, did the arrangements and orchestrations.)A giant tinsel version of the blue diamond featured in the 1997 film.Evelyn Freja for The New York Times“I never considered myself a writer,” Rousouli said in a lively conversation earlier this month with Mindelle, Blue and Connell in the theater’s basement bar space. “People ask me now, ‘What was the process like?’ And it was like I closed my eyes, and all of a sudden there was draft there and I’d written this whole musical.” They wrote the initial book in a month and a half, he said.They began doing pop-up concerts of the show-in-progress at small venues around Los Angeles in 2017 and then New York the next year. The first performances were bare-bones affairs, with no set or costumes and, according to Mindelle, a “really bad” Dion accent in the first readings. But audiences loved them — and many came back for a second or third time.After a pandemic delay, they opened the first fully staged production of “Titanique” at the Asylum in June. The first month was a little scary, Blue said, with entire rows sitting empty. But by July, thanks to social media buzz, they were selling out shows. It helped that Frankie Grande, who recently had his final performance in the dual role of Jack’s pal Luigi and the Canadian actor Victor Garber, has a famous half sister, Ariana, who gave the show a shout-out after attending.“Social media and word of mouth has just been wildfire for us,” Mindelle said.Soon, celebrities were coming to see it, among them Garber, who played the shipbuilder Thomas Andrews in the film, and Lloyd Webber.“He looked at us and he goes, ‘You’re all mad,’” Rousouli said, affecting a British accent in imitation of Lloyd Webber. “I said, ‘Cool, thanks, we are.’”The production’s scrappy spirit remained when it moved to the larger Daryl Roth Theater in November, where the show now features richer sound and around 100 more seats.“I was afraid we were going to lose that sense of intimacy and charm,” Mindelle said. “But we’re now running in the audience the entire time; I can still make eye contact with people, I can still touch every person.”Members of the cast rehearsing. Unlike a typical Broadway musical, the “Titanique” script is updated weekly, sometimes daily, to stay current with pop culture references and TikTok trends.Evelyn Freja for The New York TimesPart of the appeal, said Ty Hanes, 29, a musical theater actor who has gone 13 times, is that no two performances are the same. He looks forward to seeing what Mindelle will do in the five-minute scene between Rose and Jack that she improvises every night (some of his favorites: a bit about a toenail falling off and a riff on Spam, the tinned pork product).“You can tell they just have a blast changing stuff up a bit every night,” he said.“Sometimes it really works, and sometimes it doesn’t,” Mindelle said.“No, it does,” Rousouli said. “It always lands.”Unlike a Broadway musical like “Wicked,” in which the script does not change after the show opens, Rousouli said, they tweak the show weekly — sometimes daily — to stay current on pop culture moments and TikTok trends. On a recent night, a joke featuring a Patti LuPone cardboard cutout drew loud laughs (“You can’t even be here, this is a union gig!”), and a line originally uttered by Jennifer Coolidge’s character in the Season 2 finale of the HBO satire “The White Lotus” (“These gays, they’re trying to murder me.”), now spoken by Russell Daniels performing in drag as Rose’s mother, received a mid-show standing ovation.“People feel like they’re part of something special every night,” Rousouli said.One aspect of the show’s popularity that has been rewarding, if unintentional, Mindelle said, is how L.G.B.T.Q. audiences have embraced it. “I never thought that we were writing something inherently so queer,” said Mindelle, who like Rousouli, Blue and Connell identifies as queer. “It’s just intrinsic in our DNA and our sense of humor.”Bloomquist, who is gay, said the show resonated with his personal experience. “Everything that’s coming out of the show’s mouth, you’re like ‘Oh my God, this is just how I speak with my friends,’” he said.The musical, which announced its fourth extension last week and continues to sell out a majority of its performances, is set to close May 14, but Mindelle said an even longer run may be in the cards.“I think the show has the potential to be much like the song,” she said. “We hope it will go on and on and on.” More

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    25 Years After ‘Titanic,’ Quebec’s Love for Céline Dion Will Go On

    The outpouring that greeted the singer’s announcement that she has a rare neurological condition showed how both Céline fandom, and ideas of national identity in her home province, have evolved.MONTREAL — It was a Friday night in Montreal, and hundreds of euphoric revelers were dancing and singing “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” at a sold-out Céline Dion tribute party. One young man vogued in a homemade version of the gold-tinted headpiece of singed peacock feathers that Dion wore at the Met Gala a few years ago. Another gawked at a mini-shrine of Dion-inspired wigs, showcasing her hairstyles through the decades.“In an era of arrogant stars, she is always authentic,” Simon Venne, the voguer, a 38-year-old stylist, gushed. “She is everything to us, a source of pride, our queen.”If there was ever a sense that Quebec, the French-speaking province of Dion’s birth, was conflicted about Dion’s rise to global superstardom with pop hits that she often sang in English, it has been dispelled. She now occupies an exalted space here, experiencing a cultural renaissance as Quebec’s younger generation has unabashedly embraced her: Radio Canada, the national French language broadcaster, parses her life on a podcast translated as “Céline—She’s The Boss!”; a recent docuseries called “It’s Cool to Like Céline Dion” explored her appeal to millennials, and Céline Dion drag competitions have been surging.Dion’s emotional announcement this month that she is suffering from a rare neurological condition called stiff person syndrome, forcing her to postpone upcoming tour dates, was met with an extraordinary outpouring. Québécois politicians from across the political spectrum, including both Quebec’s premiere, François Legault, and the head of a party advocating Quebec’s independence from Canada, jockeyed to express sympathy for Dion, 54. Fans commiserated over social media. A headline in Le Devoir, an influential Quebec newspaper, called her “Céline, Queen of the Québécois.” Dion, the newspaper noted, had attained the status of untouchable icon after years of being panned by critics and mocked by others.“It’s like hearing your aunt is sick,” Venne, the feathered fan, said. “Céline is famous around the world, but here she is family.”A sold-out Céline Dion tribute party in Montreal drew fans who dressed like her, gawked at Dion-inspired wigs, and danced and sang along to her music. Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesThe intensity of the reaction here — 25 years after the premiere of the blockbuster film “Titanic,” which helped make Dion’s bombastically exuberant “My Heart Will Go On” ubiquitous — shows how much Céline fandom and ideas of Québécois identity have evolved over time as the province, like its most famous daughter, has come of age.The Unsinkable Celine DionThe Canadian superstar has won over fans with her octave-hopping renditions of songs like “Because You Loved Me” and “My Heart Will Go On.”Rare Disorder Diagnosis: Celine Dion announced that she had a neurological condition known as stiff person syndrome, which forced her to cancel and reschedule dates on her planned 2023 tour.A Consummate Professional: At a concert in Brooklyn in 2020, the pop diva was fully in command of her glorious voice — and the crowd gathered to bask in it.Adored by Fans: Dion can count on some of the most loyal supporters in the industry. In return, she gives all of herself to them.From the Archives: Dion achieved international stardom in the 1990s after charming audiences in French Canada and France. Here is what The Times wrote about her in 1997.During a recent visit to Céline Dion Boulevard in Charlemagne, a soulless stretch of road in the gritty working-class town of about 6,000 on the outskirts of Montreal where Dion was born, a group of 20-somethings said it was no longer embarrassing to admit to liking her music.“Being stuck at home during the pandemic made people nostalgic for the past, and everything old and vintage is in fashion,” said Gabriel Guénette, 26, a university student and sometime Uber delivery man, explaining why he and his friends were singing “The Power of Love” during karaoke nights. Dion’s unbridled message of hope and optimism, he added, resonated during these uncertain times.Older residents in Charlemagne still refer to her as “notre petite Céline” — our little Céline — and recall her days as a shy teenager who performed French ballads with her 13 brothers and sisters at her family’s restaurant. Younger residents — including Meghan Arsenault, 15, who attends the same high school Dion did — grew up singing her songs.Across Quebec, a Francophone province of 8.5 million people that has been buffeted by centuries of subjugation and fears of being subsumed by the English language, Dion has at times been a polarizing figure. Even as many fans ardently embraced her, she was dismissed by some critics as the cultural equivalent of poutine, the Québécois snack of French fries and cheese curds drenched in gravy drunkenly and guiltily consumed at 3 a.m.Some elites balked at her success, seeing in her sprawling working class family, her garish outfits and her broken English an uncomfortable mirror of an old Quebec they preferred to forget. Some considered her quétaine, cheesy in Québécois argot.Céline Dion Boulevard in Charlemagne, her hometown.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesOlder residents in Charlemagne still call her “notre petite Céline” — our little Céline.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesAnd her singing in English has, at times, been an affront to hard-core Francophone nationalists. But when Dion thanked the audience with a “Merci!” at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 after singing “The Power of The Dream,” the single word reverberated across the province, an affirmation that French Canada had gone global.Martin Proulx, a producer who hosted the podcast, “Céline, She’s the Boss!” recalled that as a gay teenager in Montreal in the 1990s, he hid the fact that he was listening to her “Let’s Talk About Love” album on his Sony Walkman. “It wasn’t cool to love Céline when I was in high school — kids my age were listening to hip-hop and heavy rock and she was for soccer moms who watched Oprah,” he recalled.Now, he said, he could proudly proclaim his ardor, in part because a more confident Quebec has shed some of its past complexes. The younger generation of Québécois, he said, seems less hung up than their parents or grandparents on issues of language and identity, and more likely to embrace Dion’s global stardom, financial success and bilingualism as a template for their own international aspirations.“We used to roll our eyes — now we think she’s pure genius,” Mr. Proulx said. “She never changed. We did.”Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Quebec-born music director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, said that his first memory of Dion was from 1984, when he was eight years old. Dion, who was 16, sang a song about a dove in front of Pope John Paul II and 60,000 people at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium. Nézet-Séguin said he had surged with pride that she was a fellow Quebecer, and said that he sees Dion as a “diva” in the operatic sense of the word.“When I think about a diva, I think about personality, having something recognizable artistically, and one can’t deny the virtuosic aspect of Céline’s singing,” he said.Bennett’s Dion collection is extensive.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesHe even has a custom Dion sport coat.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesThe intense interest in Dion is hardly limited to Quebec. “Aline,” a highly unusual, fictionalized film drawn from her life, drew buzz at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. When a musical parody of “Titanic” called “Titanique” recently moved to a larger Off Broadway theater in New York, its producers promised “More shows. More seats. More Céline.” And Dion is set to appear alongside Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Sam Heughan in a romantic comedy called “Love Again” that is expected in theaters in North America in May.The fascination with Dion endures in part because her Cinderella story never grows old. The youngest of 14 children of an accordion-playing butcher and a homemaker from Charlemagne, Dion’s first bed as a child was a drawer. At the age of 12, she co-wrote her first song, “Ce n’était qu’un rêve,” with the help of her mother and her brother Jacques. Her brother Michel sent a cassette demo to the impresario René Angélil, who became her manager and, later, her husband.Dion had a complete makeover, disappearing for 18 months in 1986 to study English, cap her teeth, perm her hair, and take voice and dance lessons. A star was born.When Angélil died in 2016, two days before his 74th birthday, his two-day, meticulously choreographed funeral at Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica was televised by the CBC, the national broadcaster, and flags were lowered at half-mast across Quebec. Dion, veiled in black, stood by her husband’s open coffin for seven hours, greeting Quebec dignitaries and the public.Nearly every inch of Mario Bennett’s cramped basement apartment is decorated with Céline Dion memorabilia. Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesIn the years since, Dion recast her analog image for the Instagram era. A Vetements Titanic hoodie she wore in Paris in 2016 broke the internet. A few years later, she stole the show at the camp-themed Met Gala, in an Oscar de la Renta clinging champagne-colored bodysuit embellished with silvery sequins. Her zany, self-deprecating appearance on James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke in 2019 from Las Vegas, during which she sang “My Heart Will Go On” in front of a replica of the Titanic’s bow at the Bellagio Hotel fountain, helped some people who had made fun of her realize that she was in on the joke.Now her fandom seems as strong as ever.Mario Bennett, 36, who works in a concert hall, began covering every inch of his cramped basement apartment with Céline Dion memorabilia at the start of the pandemic. He said that throughout his life, Ms. Dion’s powerful voice had been a clarion call to dream big. Among his prized possessions is an unauthorized collectible Céline doll, wearing a mini version of the midnight blue velvet gown that the singer wore to the Oscars in 1998.“She makes me feel that anything is possible,” he said.Guy Hermon, an Israeli drag queen who emigrated to Montreal a decade ago and absorbed Quebec culture — and the French language — by trying to embody Dion, said he had never been a fan of her music but invented his Dion alter ego, “Crystal Slippers” out of necessity on the Dion-obsessed Québécois drag circuit.After years of mimicking Ms. Dion, he said he had come to appreciate her. “She just wants everyone to be happy,” he said. More

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    Taylor Swift Fans Sue Ticketmaster’s Parent Company

    In a lawsuit filed on Friday in a California court, a group of 26 fans said Ticketmaster had engaged in anticompetitive conduct.A group of 26 fans of the singer-songwriter Taylor Swift filed a lawsuit on Friday accusing Ticketmaster’s parent company of anticompetitive conduct and fraud several weeks after a chaotic, glitch-filled sale of tickets for Ms. Swift’s upcoming tour left thousands of eager fans empty-handed and unhappy.The 33-page complaint, filed in the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles County, came after Ticketmaster canceled the public sale of tickets last month for Ms. Swift’s Eras Tour, 52 shows scheduled to begin in March. The resulting outcry from fans prompted calls from lawmakers to break up the 2010 merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation.The complaint accuses Ticketmaster of anticompetitive conduct, saying the company has long perpetuated a “scheme” by forcing fans to exclusively use it for presale and sale prices, which are higher than what a competitive market price would be.Ticketmaster also “forced attendees to exclusively use” the platform that it operates for the resale of tickets, called the Secondary Ticket Exchange, to obtain fees and profits above what it could earn in a competitive market, the complaint states. That “anticompetitive behavior,” according to the lawsuit, harms fans and the ticket market.Fans who tried to buy tickets during a presale in mid-November reported waiting in queues for hours or being locked out of online sales. They had to preregister on Ticketmaster and be designated Verified Fans, but, for many, that didn’t help. Ticketmaster ultimately canceled its planned public sale of tickets amid the high demand.The Cultural Impact of Taylor Swift’s MusicNew LP: “Midnights,” Taylor Swift’s 10th studio album, is a return to the pop pipeline, with production from her longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff. Here is what our critic thought of it.Millennial Anti-Hero: On her latest album, Swift probes the realizations and reckonings of many 30-something women around relationships, motherhood and ambition.Fight for Her Masters: Revisit the origin story of Swift’s rerecordings of her older albums: a feud with the powerful manager Scooter Braun.Pandemic Records: In 2020, Swift released two new albums, “Folklore” and “Evermore.” In debuting a new sound, she turned to indie music.“Hundreds of thousands of people waited from four to eight hours and never got an opportunity to buy tickets, so they just want the system to change,” said Jennifer Kinder, a lawyer representing the fans.The lawsuit asks the court to stop Ticketmaster from engaging in similar conduct in the future and to fine the company $2,500 for each violation of a state code that governs unfair competition in California, where the parent company, Live Nation, is based.Even before the botched sale of Taylor Swift tickets, Live Nation, Ticketmaster’s parent company, had come under scrutiny for its power.Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock“It has to be made fair,” said Ms. Kinder, who added that she and her 11-year-old daughter were Swift fans. “This is not a fair market. This is not supply and demand. This is a manipulated market that benefits Ticketmaster.”In 2010, Ticketmaster, a ticketing giant, merged with Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promotion company, becoming Live Nation Entertainment. The company, which says it processes 500 million tickets per year in more than 30 countries, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.Greg Maffei, the chairman of Live Nation Entertainment, said in an interview on CNBC last month that the company “could’ve filled 900 stadiums,” and he partly blamed Swift’s popularity for the problems. “The reality is, Taylor Swift hasn’t been on the road for three or four years, and that’s caused a huge issue,” he said.Ticketmaster apologized in November to Swift fans for the problems with its ticket sales for the Eras Tour.It said that more than two million tickets for the tour were sold on Nov. 15, the most for an artist in a single day. Ticketmaster said it had faced a “staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have codes” to buy tickets, resulting in 3.5 billion system requests, four times its previous peak.Even before the botched sale of the Swift concert tickets, Live Nation had come under scrutiny for its power and size. The Justice Department has in recent months been investigating its practices and whether the company maintains a monopoly over the multibillion-dollar live music industry, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.Ms. Swift called the situation “excruciating” in a sharply worded statement on Instagram last month that did not name Ticketmaster.Ms. Swift wrote that she was “extremely protective” of her fans and had brought “so many elements” of her career in house in order to improve fan experiences “by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do.”“It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse,” Ms. Swift added. “There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward. I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.” More